"Militant terrorism will kill tens of thousands of victims every year in the US, Europe and Israel, until the year - 2020," this is the estimate of Dr. Max Singer, an expert in policy analysis and the founder of the Hudson Institute for Strategic and Policy Studies. In a document that Dr. Singer is currently drawing up for the administration in Washington, he outlines five apocalyptic scenarios for the world in the next two decades.
"In 2020, elements associated with militant Islam have already killed tens of thousands of Americans over 20 years," Dr. Singer details the first scenario. were successful and led to the fall of Muslim governments. The security of the Western world was cracked, and the internal disputes between the countries of the West There is a complete disconnect between the Arab world, which has been taken over by extremist Muslims, and the West. Iran, Iraq, and Egypt have nuclear weapons, but they have not yet used them, many Muslim countries also have biological weapons that have been used for some time. times, mainly in conflicts between them.
"Israel will still exist in 18 years, but the threat to its existence will be great. It can be destroyed at any moment with the help of Muslim nuclear weapons that are abundant in the Middle East. India, on the other hand, could not survive under the triumph of militant Islam, and broke up into several Muslim countries and several countries Hinduism. In all countries where there is a Muslim minority there is a problem. In some of them, like the USA, the Muslims have rejected Islam the militant and declared loyalty to the state. In some other countries, Muslims were thrown out or severely oppressed."
According to Singer, the many acts of terrorism that the Muslims will carry out during these years against the USA and Europe will lead to a complete disconnection: "Western European countries will decide that they can live without Muslim workers. There will be no transfer of students from one side of the world to the other and no tourism. The Islamic countries want to sell oil to the world, and indeed oil will be traded despite the complete separation, but the demand for it will decrease and there will also be a rapid increase in the supply of oil from non-Islamic sources, such as Venezuela and West Africa. Due to the almost complete separation, it will be difficult for militant Muslim organizations to carry out terrorist attacks in the West, so they will try to use more extreme measures, such as firing missiles from ships and airplanes."
This coming Monday, the "Herzliya Conference" of the Policy and Strategy Institute will open at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. The conference, which is being held for the third year, chaired by Dr. Uzi Arad, will deal with the balance of Israel's national resilience. In a secret discussion closed to the media, in which government officials from Washington will also participate, American and Israeli researchers will deal with various scenarios on the expected changes in the Middle East in the next 20 years In the discussion, Singer will present his five scenarios for the Middle East situation and the global balance of power 18 years.
Singer repeats the phrase "militant Islam" many times. He divides the Islamic world into three categories: the first - those who do not believe that the West is the enemy of Islam; The second - those who believe that the West is an enemy, but it is too strong to attack it. The third and most extreme category represents those who believe that Islam should attack the West in as violent ways as possible. Singer claims that the problem of the West is in dealing with the last two categories.
Singer presents two additional scenarios, in which Islam becomes stronger and may pose an existential threat to Western countries. According to the second scenario, militant Islam will indeed be rejected in the Muslim countries of Asia, but will grow and strengthen significantly in the Arab world and even spread to Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. The believers in militant Islam will succeed in convincing the Arabs that if a person is Arab, he must be anti-American. According to this scenario, Egypt will remain the only one of the Arab countries that will not pose a threat to the US, but it will possess nuclear weapons and so will Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. All the countries of the region will possess biological weapons and even use them in internal conflicts in the Arab world. Also according to this scenario Tens of thousands of innocent citizens will be killed every year in the USA, Europe and Israel, as a result of Islamic terrorist attacks.
The third scenario talks about tens of thousands of deaths in 2020 in the US alone. Singer details a complex situation, according to which the division into countries that support militant Islam and those that oppose it is more difficult, and perhaps because of this, causes such a large number of victims in the West. Militant Islam will dominate in the Arab countries in the Middle East and will gain support in the Muslim communities in Europe and Africa, but will be rejected in Turkey and Central Asia. The population in the countries of the region where militant Islam will rule will reach 900 million people, while in the opposing countries it will reach 400 million.
"If this happens, we will reach a situation where Islamic terrorism will affect the lives of the American people much more than the Cold War, and it is not certain that the United States will have a good answer to this terrorism," Singer summarizes the three apocalyptic scenarios.
Singer's global picture is not necessarily catastrophic. In the other two scenarios he deals with a militant Islam of limited power. In the fourth, militant Islam falls due to the collapse of the current regimes in Iraq and Iran, following which the region embarks on a different path: Iran becomes a democracy, Iraq becomes a modern country, the trend of modernization in Turkey strengthens, and Egypt and Syria also progress in this direction.
According to the fifth scenario, militant Islam falls due to oppression by Arab tyrants: Saddam Hussein will be replaced by military dictators, all of whom are less competent than him. Turkey will renounce the ideas of the founder of the Republic Atatürk and return to the Islamic world, but not as an extremist country. In the Arab world, dictators will still rule, but some regimes will become secular, as for example in Iran.
Singer's document includes a possible plan against militant Islam. His plan is divided into ten stages. The first is the removal of Saddam Hussein. Singer claims that it should be replaced by the Iraqi National Congress. "Until Saddam is replaced, the U.S. will not have enough influence and power to reduce terrorism and the rise of militant Islam," Singer writes. According to him, unlike Afghanistan, Iraq does not have many private armies. In addition, Singer notes, the U.S. should demand that Syria withdraw its forces from Lebanon, to try to cancel the effects of Syria in Lebanon. The West should also demand that Syria, Yemen, Sudan and Libya expel the terrorist organizations operating in them, using political and diplomatic techniques. This action will reduce the number of international terrorist organizations.
One of the key steps to action, according to the American expert, is the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Singer suggests several principles for ending the conflict: solving the refugee problem by resettling them; prohibition of the use of terrorism; promoting pluralism among the Palestinians; Insisting on a clear and secure border for Israel and a Palestinian state based on a Palestinian Authority committed to peace with Israel. He does not mention the settlements and the return to the '67 lines. He assumes that until they reach a solution, it will be possible to bend the Palestinians, as they will do in Iraq and Iran.
"To reduce the threat against the West, we must concentrate on strengthening the perception that the Arabs are too strong to be attacked. I am convinced of the need for a strong step to prevent the spread of militant Islam in the Arab world. My view is that the danger of militant Islam is too serious, for us to take risks about it. Islam makes up 20 percent of the world's population, there are a lot more ways things can get out of hand than we might think, And the West is very vulnerable when it comes to terrorism," he concludes.
Singer further states that the current threat to the US comes from organizations that receive great support from governments, and points out that it is impossible to achieve protection against terrorism if there are organizations that have a "safe harbor" in foreign countries. Effective protection against terrorism requires attacking terrorist bases. Therefore, the first step What is needed is to end all support of governments to terrorist organizations. Once this is done, it may be possible to largely destroy and reduce the threat of terrorist organizations, at least those that are known today Singer, that even if the West succeeds in dismantling the connection between the terrorist organizations and the governments like in Syria and Iran, there will be enough organizations and individuals who can "put the terrorist organizations on their feet".
In an attempt to clarify how important American aggression against radical Islam is, Singer chooses to compare the possibility of a war between the West and Islam to the Cold War between the US and the USSR, which is known to be moving along the axis of atomic weapons.
Lest there be any doubt, Singer takes pains to state the main reasons why the Islamic danger is real. Singer notes the increase in Islamic hostility against the US, the sensitivity of the West to terrorist attacks and the inability to know from which country the terrorist attacks originate.
From a news item by Ilail Shahar and Noam Amit, Maariv 1/12/2002
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